Worker to Worker Dialogues: Building Grassroots Global Labor Solidarity Networks

Chaumtoli Huq, Editor of Law@theMargins
Chaumtoli Huq is the Editor of Law@theMargins

In an earlier post, Crushing Greed: Building Transnational Labor SolidarityI suggest that we are at a key political and organizing moment so as to create a grassroots based transnational global solidarity network that is based on worker to worker links.  I write:

The growth of social justice organizations in the South Asian immigrant community coupled with the renewed labor movement provides the grassroots infrastructure and capacity for immigrant workers in the United States to show clear and unequivocal solidarity with workers in Bangladesh and globally. Capacity building and strengthening those organizations’ infrastructure will be the foundation necessary to build up any grassroots led, transnational solidarity movement.

It is not enough to acknowledge this organizing moment, but we need to devote resources to building the capacity of immigrant workers organizations in US and labor organizations in the global south to build the infrastructure for this grassroots, global solidarity movement.

After spending ten months in Bangladesh researching the labor conditions in the garment industry and meeting with key leaders in the broader labor movement there, I return to New York City convinced in the importance of worker to worker dialogue as a beginning step to capacity building efforts.   Using my research from the past ten months, and in collaboration with documentary filmmaker Mohammed Romel, I am working on a documentary project that seeks to highlight ways workers in Bangladesh are organizing themselves to improve their working conditions.  The documentary project titled Sramik Awaaz: Workers Voices is structured in an interview format and intends to to elevate the voices on the ground from labor leaders in the garment industry.   Through this project, I had the opportunity to interview garment worker union leader Anju Begum.  Listen to a clip of her interview.

I shared this clip of Anju Begum with labor leaders in the immigrant community in United States, and received a beautiful video letter from Nahar Alam, Founder and Executive Director of Andolan: Organizing South Asian Workers.  Nahar, a former domestic worker and survivor of domestic violence, came to US, began organizing domestic worker in the mid 1990s.  In her video letter, she shares her personal and organizing experiences as a worker who experienced workplace abuse as a domestic worker in America: She says: “It is a fact that workers not only face abuse in Bangladesh, but also in USA.”  She continues “women are coming forward in many countries and working side by side. There may be problems with husband, family yet women are overcoming obstacles and coming forward.” She ends her video letter with a call for unity and offer of solidarity.   There are few opportunities for this “dialogue” to emerge because there isn’t a mechanism for factory level leaders to communicate with labor leaders and organizers outside of Bangladesh.  We need to create more opportunities for these communication to occur among workers.


Labor leader Nazma Akter in Bangladesh also shares the importance of global labor solidarity from the ground up.  She recommends workers in production sending countries in Asia to form a regional union, and workers globally in USA, Canada and Europe to organize themselves, and then, jointly all workers should fight multinational companies.  MNCs move exploitation from place to another to benefit company’s profit but that weakens unions. Her comments suggests the need to build the grassroots capacity of workers so that they have the organizational capacity to forge meaningful solidarity networks to address labor exploitation globally.  Otherwise, the economic inequality between the global south and north would leave workers in global south as an unequal partner.   Listen to her full interview.

Up until recently, global labor solidarity among workers has been mediated by larger international non profit organizations or international unions where their leadership has not represented the very workers in the global south they seek to ally with nor the workers of color in the global north whose allyship they are offering.  So, what we see are policies impacting a female workforce both in the US and the global south reflecting dialogues and polices that do not always prioritize building capacity of the organizers at a grassroots level.   This has a negative impact on developing diverse female leaders.  This does not mean there isn’t a positive role these international NGOs or unions have played and should continue to play in advocating for labor rights globally.  But, their work results in a policy myopia where leadership has not been built from poor and working class communities.

The power in Anju Begum’s interview, Nahar Alam’s video letter and Nazma Akter’s call for solidarity is that they are all powerful women of color with deep roots in grassroots organizing who call for increased labor rights for workers whether they are a garment worker in Bangladesh or a domestic worker in New York.  These dialogues and other capacity building efforts need to be supported to build a grassroots global labor solidarity network.  The first step is to have worker-leaders in dialogue with each other.

Building the foundation for meaningful solidarity networks will take time.  It will require grassroots groups in US to become stronger and make linkages with organizations in the global south.  Grassroots Global Justice Alliance is one example of such an effort in the US.  Concurrently, it will require grassroots groups in the global south to strengthen their organizations and build links with grassroots groups globally.   Resources and political conditions severely constrain both efforts, but as long as the vision remains to build a grassroots up global solidarity network, I am confident such a network is possible.

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  • […] So what are we to make of the race to the bottom personified?  Local approaches to resolving the crisis of extractive capitalism will have limited success: corporations can move to the next poorest country and abuse workers there.  If we are to have meaningful improvements in the quality of life of our global brothers and sisters, we must act on a global front!  While such collaboration may seem difficult, examples abound of trans-national collaboration. […]

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